Virgin? Extra Virgin? Just how chaste do you need your olive oil, anyway? Choose the right grade for your dip, dressing or drizzling.
Olive oil is one of nature’s perfect foods – full of healthy monounsaturated fats that experts believe can reduce/lower your risk of heart disease, anti-oxidants, and, best of all, full of rich olive flavor. Technically a juice, since the olive is a fruit and the oil is what comes out when you squeeze it, it's been made much the same way for thousands of years. These days, though, producers have learned to get more oil from the same olive through industrial methods, and there are different grades of olive oil. When it comes to cooking and eating, choosing the right grade makes all the difference.
Extra virgin olive oil is the original stuff – the first cold pressing, as done in the Mediterranean a millennium ago. With an acidity of less than one percent, it's like the cream on top of fresh milk. It can range from a champagne color to a rich green; generally the greener it is, the more full and fruity the flavor. It's the perfect choice for salad dressings and finishing sauces. For dipping bread, just add a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper to the oil. It's not very good for frying, however, because it smokes at a relatively low temperature.
Virgin olive oil, also from the first pressing, has a higher acidity (1-2%) and less flavor. It's considered to be of relatively lower quality, but it'll do in a pinch.
Pure olive oil is made primarily from oil that's deemed unfit for consumption (i.e. it tastes or smells funny). To make it fit, manufacturers put it through mechanical, thermal or (yikes!) chemical processes to remove impurities. At this point it has no taste or aroma, so they mix in some quantity of virgin or possibly extra virgin oil (usually 1-15%). Alternatively, it is relatively better to use an expeller pressed canola or any other virgin vegetable oil.
Light olive oil is a relatively new product. It's a variation on the pure olive oil described above, but with less virgin oil added. It's not lower in calories or fat, but it generally has less flavor. So no go!
Olive pomace oil is oil mechanically or chemically created from the cake left over after the first pressing. It doesn't have any of the anti-oxidant properties of extra virgin. Evita! (That means “avoid” in Italian). It is relatively better to use an expeller canola or any other virgin vegetable oil.